Mimicry of partially occluded emotional faces: do we mimic what we see or what we know?

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  • Additional Information
    • Source:
      Publisher: Routledge Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 8710375 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1464-0600 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 02699931 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Cogn Emot Subsets: MEDLINE
    • Publication Information:
      Publication: 2013- : London : Routledge
      Original Publication: Hove, UK ; Hillsdale, USA : L. Erlbaum Associates, [c1987-
    • Subject Terms:
      Facial Muscles*/physiology ; Emotions*/physiology; Humans ; Anger/physiology ; Cognition ; Recognition, Psychology ; Facial Expression ; Electromyography
    • Abstract:
      Facial electromyography (EMG) was used to investigate patterns of facial mimicry in response to partial facial expressions in two contexts that differ in how naturalistic and socially significant the faces are. Experiment 1 presented participants with either the upper- or lower-half of facial expressions and used a forced-choice emotion categorisation task. This task emphasises cognition at the expense of ecological and social validity. Experiment 2 presented whole heads and expressions were occluded by clothing. Additionally, the emotion recognition task is more open-ended. This context has greater social validity. We found mimicry in both experiments, however mimicry differed in terms of which emotions were mimicked and the extent to which the mimicry involved muscle sites that were not observed. In the more cognitive context, there was relatively more motor matching (i.e. mimicking only what was seen). In the more socially valid context, participants were less likely to mimic only what they saw - and instead mimicked what they knew. Additionally, participants mimicked anger in the cognitive context but not the social context. These findings suggest that mimicry involves multiple mechanisms and that the more social the context, the more likely it is to reflect a mechanism of social regulation.
    • Contributed Indexing:
      Keywords: emotion; emotional understanding; facial mimicry; motor matching
    • Publication Date:
      Date Created: 20221027 Date Completed: 20230324 Latest Revision: 20230406
    • Publication Date:
      20230406
    • Accession Number:
      10.1080/02699931.2022.2135490
    • Accession Number:
      36300446